self on an errand so bootless, and as a phantom so undesired? No; even in this hyperphysical region, and in the very vanguard of our advance upon the Unseen, we are forced to believe that 'Dieu n'agit pas par des volontés particulières '-we are forced to surmise the presence of a law which, though obscure, is immutable; which is a factor in the fabric of things, and was not framed, nor is suspended, in the special interest of any one of us.

But, at the same time-and now we fear that a certain section of the scientific world may in their turn find our suggestions distasteful -the theory of telepathy does undoubtedly afford an unexpected support to a certain school of religious conceptions. For there are two very different theological views (often obscured by vagueness of language) as to the manner in which unseen powers exercise influence on the visible world. Some dogmatists have insisted that such influence is, in the strictest sense of the word, miraculous; that it involves a suspension of the laws of nature, an interference with the established course of things; and that, in fact, on such non-natural or miraculous character its sanctity and value depend. Now against this creed Telepathy, like any other correlation under law of facts previously supposed to be arbitrary exceptions to law, does but accumulate one more presumption. But there have been other theologians, from Augustine to Archbishop Trench, who have formulated the claim of theology in a wiser way. Such men maintain that an influence is in truth exercised by the invisible on the visible world, but that it is exercised according to laws which, though unknown to us, do in fact regulate and determine the action of higher intelligences, whose volition thus intervenes in human affairs in a fashion as strictly conditioned as any volitions of our own.

Now the evidence which we have been discussing certainly does not supply any direct confirmation of this view either. We have found no need to postulate the existence of any intelligences except human minds, and human minds, not in hell or heaven, but on earth as we know them. But, nevertheless, if other intelligent beings besides those visible to us do in fact exist-if man's own soul survives the tomb-then, no doubt, our telepathic experiments and our collected cases of apparitions, interpreted as we interpret them, do suggest analogies of influence, modes of operation, which (it is hardly too much to say) would throw a quite novel light over the long controversy between Science and Faith. It is only in some form of idealism that that controversy can find a close. And we are far too sensible of the problem involved in the relation of our own will to the facts and forces of nature to meet any idealistic hypothesis of the relation of other wills to those facts and forces with a direct denial. We cannot call a hypothesis unphilosophical-however much unproved-if it introduces into the great problem no difficulty which

is not already there, and is compatible-which the cruder theory of miracle is not-with the known facts of the universe, viewed in that connected manner which alone can give stability to thought.

But we shall do no more than indicate this line of reflection. We have no wish to take wing as chimæræ bombinantes in vacuo-fullblown explainers of the universe-but rather to be accepted as hewers of wood and drawers of water in a territory which inductive science has yet to clear for her own. Nay, we have preferred to submit to the inconvenience of an arbitrary restriction of our subject rather than to risk the dangers which might attend its further extension. Of apparitions after death we say nothing here; we choose rather to defer all discussion of such evidence as is alleged for them (though we receive and examine it) until we have learnt everything that it may be possible to learn of those phantasms of the living which do not tempt us among agencies so obscure and unknown. It is true that even of these incidents death is the central fact. It is in this profoundest shock which human life encounters that these phantasms are normally engendered; and, where not in death itself, at least in one of those special moments, whether of strong mental excitement or of bodily collapse, which of all living experiences come nearest to the great crisis of dissolution. Following the track not only of logical sequence but of imaginative interest, our evidence has carried us from the slightest to the gravest of human things, from the curiosities of an afternoon to the crises of a lifetime, from petty experiments and seemingly aimless mysteries up to the experience which there is no refusing, and into the heart of the supreme mystery which surrounds and overshadows us whether we speculate about it or no. But in the light of advancing knowledge that mystery may appear-if no less profound than ever-at any rate less appalling. We have drawn on no creeds; we have appealed to no 'supernatural agencies.' But new facts cannot leave old facts exactly where they found them; and we have at any rate discovered in death the great and peculiar source of phenomena which-however we interpret them are essentially vital. With this reflection we may pause on the threshold-vestibulum ante ipsum primisque in faucibus Orci -till our eyes, which still can look into daylight, have grown accustomed to the darkening air. Not here, indeed, any more than elsewhere, shall we find the Elysian road' which will conduct man undoubtingly to such beliefs as his heart most craves. Centauri in foribus stabulant. There will, we doubt not, as discovery replaces imagination, be found much that will startle, something that will alarm or repel. But in this age, if in any, it may surely be affirmed that Truth, after all, is the prime passion of mankind'; and the audience, the fellow-workers, to whom we look are those who in these deep matters are weary alike of unproved dogma and of uninquiring

negation; who have faith enough in the methods and in the future of Science to feel confident that the same humble, candid, persistent collection and colligation of facts-without disdain of the smallest things or fear of the hardest-which in one century has so changed our outlook on the world, may be rewarded hereafter by the opening of horizons wider still,-by a more indisputable insight, a more assured penetration into the chief concerns of man.'

EDMUND GURNEY.

FREDERIC W. H. MYERS.

THE FEDERAL STATES OF THE WORLD.

No boy,' said Mr. Forster in 1875, ought to leave school, either at home or in the colonies, without knowing what the British empire is. If he fully gains that knowledge, I think he will not seldom draw the inference that the British empire ought to last, and determine that, as far as in him lies, he will do what he can to insure that it shall last.'

Since the passing of the last Reform Bill in 1867, and since the opinions of the working classes, into whose hands the chief political power was then transferred, have made themselves felt, a wondrous change in the common notions held respecting the connection of Great Britain and her colonies has taken place. The working men of England, so far from wishing that the colonies should be cast off, were the first who raised their voices and signed a petition containing 100,000 signatures of the working men of London against the severance. Up to that date it was the fashion to hold that the colonies should separate from us; but now each party in the State is vieing with the other in protesting that nothing is so important in their eyes as that Great and Greater Britain should remain united. Lord Derby, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, said recently (3rd of March):

Numbers of the best of our artisans make their way to the colonies in the hope of improving their position, and amongst the higher classes there is a warm and keen interest in colonial affairs. It is possible that some may have thought that by granting self-government to the colonies we should gradually detach them from the mother country, but I do not believe that at this time, or for twenty years past, any man has looked upon the colonies as a burden to the empire, or that it was desirable that any of them should secede.

And on the same occasion Sir Hercules Robinson, one of the most able and experienced of our colonial administrators, observed that a great change had come over public opinion since he entered the colonial service thirty years ago, and now almost every one advocated the retention of our colonies, and the promotion of a closer union between them and the mother country. What all should strive for was to devise means for such a close political union as would enable millions upon millions of Anglo-Canadians and Anglo-Australians to advance in national life, and at the same time to remain members of the great empire to which it was their pride and privilege to belong. He believed that before long there would have to be constituted an imperial parliament, controlling an assemblage of federalised States, each possessing the fullest measure of home rule.

It would be a mistake, then, to conclude (as some colonists do) that because the ordinary educated Englishman' at home has up to this time remained ignorant of technical details concerning them, therefore he does not care for the whole of the British dominions, but only for one-sixty-fourth part of them, which is the proportion the area of the British Isles bears to that of the empire. He cannot help caring for this expansion of England' which has been going on for 200 years and is still continuing, and even on a more extended scale than ever within the last fifty years. An Englishman's sympathies cannot but be stirred when he sees and appreciates what his brethren and race have done beyond the seas. But does he even then fully appreciate the matter in its political aspect? That is the question. With the pressure of population at home, the inherent energy of our race, not only physically and materially, but in all that goes to give healthiness of political and moral life, is ever forcing itself into new outlets, and has driven millions to emigrate to territories happily possessed by Great Britain in the temperate regions both of the northern and southern hemispheres, where, industrious, persevering, and imbued with love of orderly freedom, they have established themselves.

But has it been sufficiently remembered by some of us at home. that the sons of England who left her shores to enrich and develop her dominions by colonisation are still an essential part and parcel of our stock and nation? Too often, in the midst of the bustle of our island life, as soon as our countrymen have gone, it has been true that out of sight they were also out of mind, except to their artisan relatives in every town and village of the land: there they are remembered, and with these they still keep up active intercourse. They, on the other hand, as was very natural, have felt always, wherever they went, that they were British still. One group of English possessions-the six colonies to the east of the Hudson-by our earlier colonists was called New England, its neighbour New Jersey, another, New Scotland, a fourth, by later colonists, and in another hemisphere, New Wales, and yet a sixth and seventh, although the British flag has ceased for a season to cover them, New Ireland, New Caledonia, and New Hebrides; and to two of the richest provinces in the southern hemisphere, Victoria and Queensland, whither our sons have swarmed, they gave the name of that sovereign whose sway, as heartily and loyally in the new country as in the old, they accept and revere; while of the counties and towns both in Canada and Australasia that repeat the echoes and recall the memories of counties, of towns, and of statesmen left behind in Britain, the number is simply endless. In this sense, at any rate, Nemo potest exuere patriam.

And all this has been gradually and steadily going on until now the question demands prompt and statesmanlike solution, 'What are to VOL. XVI.-No. 89.

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